How's Work? with Esther Pere - Breaking News Has Broken Us

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0:03

How’s work is an unscripted one.

Time counseling session focused on work for the purposes of maintaining confidentiality names, employers and other identifiable characteristics have been removed, but their voices and their stories are real.

0:32

It’s an understatement to say that this is the hardest gear that are new things have happened.

I’m not meeting co-founders or colleagues for this session for this session.

I chose to meet an entire team.

0:48

In fact, an entire Newsroom of 70 or so people.

They’ve asked me to come and do a session with them because they have felt that dealing with breaking news has broken them.

We all just cover, like terrible products, add things all the time.

1:06

Whatever the daily cars, we are always on.

And that’s true for any Newsroom people care about their jobs and they are on 24 hours a day, 7 days, a week.

Journalists during Discovery deer have been essential workers of their own kind.

1:25

They are Frontline workers themselves.

They’re interacting with the visceral experience of people like you can’t, you can’t turn away from the thing that is stressful and upsetting because it’s your job to be turned toward it.

1:42

There’s like no Escape.

I wrote an obit for the woman who ran the front desk at my gym.

Died.

And they don’t even have the possibility of getting the support from each other that, they typically have when they are in The Newsroom.

1:58

Are you in such a big part of being a journalist?

I feel like are those moments of walking across The Newsroom and striking up conversations.

That’s how ideas Fox.

You hear?

Someone do a phone interview and you go like wait.

2:14

I actually know someone who also does that.

The collaboration is so much harder to To do when we’re all so far away.

And then also just the fact that like we’ve had a big change in leadership.

We had layoffs and so we’ve just lost a lot of stuff and yet we’ve had more work than ever before, because of the nature of our job.

2:38

We are going through a huge racial Reckoning.

We have lost so many women of color through layoffs and also through them just not wanting to be Here anymore, a newsroom that seemed a state of grief that has experienced tremendous losses.

2:57

Over the past year, a newsroom that has experienced a state of collective trauma.

And that is exhausted.

They are participants of the very stories that they are witnessing.

Her friends.

3:18

I’m so excited today to introduce psychotherapist staff, her L A best-selling author of multiple books on relationships and sexuality.

And so, therefore, you might be thinking, why do we have the world’s most famous sex therapist chatting with our Newsroom and that’s because her latest podcast, how’s work is focused on work and work relationships.

3:40

And with this year of hell.

We thought we could have her come and talk to The Newsroom about the impact of crisis.

On the workplace.

And while anyone who has engaged with her work, at all knows that if there will make you rethink your whole life and every relationship you’ve had.

3:56

She did want to make clear that she won’t be so bold as to claim that she can fix anyone or solve anything in one session.

She makes no promises of quick fixes, unfortunately, and so with that suits, your all muted, can you please give me a best jazz hands or clapping and welcome Escape?

4:15

Well, thank you.

Q.

Thank you, and hey everybody.

So let me ask you just very very briefly.

You’re all in your home’s, I imagined, but broadly you said, okay.

There’s this conversation.

4:31

It’s a therapist.

She’s going to talk about what happens to us individually and to The Newsroom in this time.

Give me just a few things.

So I have a pulse check from you.

Anybody be the sacrificial victim, just to prime the pump.

4:50

The thing that I was thinking the most of is the sense of isolation.

It’s accompanied all of this.

It’s been many months now and although I normally work out of San Francisco.

And so I’m already at a remove from the people in New York, the it’s been significantly worse.

5:10

I felt much much more isolated from my colleagues since since This is all began and I’m really struggling with that.

Can you say one more thing about it?

Because it’s such a theme.

It’s not just your experience alone.

You talking, you know, he anybody who’s going to say something here, is going to be talking for many people.

5:30

Everyone’s individual experience is part of a collective experience.

So, so the isolation.

What about it?

The see, Kiki, what aspect of it?

Well, in part, it makes it harder to do my job, which involves coordinating work products.

5:48

How they flow from person to person as they move.

So it just makes my job harder, but it also has made my life much harder.

It’s just hard for me, not to interact with people all day.

And I have noticed that it asks a lot more High partner as a consequence of that because she’s the only person that I see Most states.

6:10

And so, Where I would have seen a lot more people in my small office on the day-to-day basis, I don’t anymore.

And all of a sudden, there’s just one person who’s asked to Bear all of the Weight of my for in-person interactions and ice cream.

6:30

And she struggles with that and it’s hard.

Yep.

Yep.

Can I just ask you all?

Just to raise your hand in case that resonates?

Just so you get a sense as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’m just going to listen for a minute before I say more.

6:47

But yes, who else?

I would love to add to that and just like a slightly different version of that experience, which is that I live by myself.

And I know there are others here as well, who live by themselves.

I think Al version of that might be that most of our kind of interaction.

7:07

Comes very intensely from work.

Now in a way that it didn’t before, and that at least for me, personally has made me feel very intensely about everything that happens at work and every interaction that I have it just is like this.

Much more weight attached to it.

Yeah, let me hear a couple more.

7:27

I would I would throw in that it feels like because there’s so much happening in the world and my desk is in my bedroom like next to my bed.

And I feel like I am often, like scrolling through Twitter until midnight, even though I don’t have to and then like thinking about work so much to the time that it’s easy to get burned out even when you’re not actually working and it feels like a self-control thing.

7:52

Like I could just decide to save it for work, but it’s hard when work.

Life bleed together so much.

So the context in which this conversation takes place.

I think that we are not working from home.

8:08

We are working with home.

And that’s very different.

There has never been such a strong collapse of the boundaries between all our roads where we are the worker, the boss, the parent, the teacher, the tutor, the partner to cook the cleaner, all of it, and I probably missed a few, you know, at the same time without anything that usually is called contextual living, we are highly localized to, and The we work in one place, we go to eating other places.

8:45

We exercise in the third one, we go see friends in the fourth one.

There is time and space in between that delineate and then markets between these various activities and it is intensely organizing for us to dress differently for different places to go to different places to have a beginning and an end in that place to move back to the next one to have a space called commuter travel or something.

9:08

In between this collapse of the Aries is intensely psychologically taxing, and then to turn the home into a gym and a restaurant and an office, and a laundromat and everything else as well.

9:25

So that, you know, what you described about, you know, I’m already lying there and I’m on Twitter and I’m in bed and the bed is next to the desk.

And you know, we’ve never been more physically apart and we’ve never been more intimately involved in each other’s private spaces.

I mean, people are literally entering bedrooms when they’ve never even been in other people’s homes, you know, and how do we counter that has everything to do with creating routines and rituals and boundaries, you know, it’s like a tiny gesture to make sure that, you know, you clean the table on which you have worked so that it becomes a dining room table, but it actually is intensely important to create these.

10:09

Partitions between activity and between state of being and state of mind.

So that’s the first thing that I was going to highlight with you.

Actually, is this the on the one hand, the request to become more flexible and more open and more understanding of who we are as people.

10:28

But on the other end, also a really need to strengthen the structure.

That usually comes as part of the way we live and that this time, we must deliberate.

Italy do ourselves.

You know, that’s the first thing.

10:44

There’s a few things for me or so that has to do with this one is the dealing with the sense of prolonged uncertainty.

We have been in this constant, you know, like a total pandemic hum and this sense of prolonged uncertainty is knowing at people, they know in a real consistent way, even when we allow ourselves the Best picked of the quarantine, you know, the slowing down, some of us the opportunity to reconnect with certain parts of ourselves or with others are with our families.

11:19

There is distinct underneath and we tend to call it stress, but it is much more multi-dimensional, you know, if you break it into parts and you start to give it names.

It’s called sadness confusion, irritability, despair hopelessness loneliness.

11:39

Is that stress?

It needs to be named.

The unfortunately, when we just call it stress, we tend to also highly physical eyes, it and just look at it as a physiological response.

We tend to medicalize it.

Look at it as symptoms and most and foremost.

11:55

We tend to see the answer to stress through a prism of self care and self care, which you have heard.

Plenty of in The Newsroom.

I’m not going to tell you more about self-care because everyone hears about mindfulness and meditation and all of All the time.

When in fact, much of the self care that is needed in a time of collective experiences is tapping into the resources of other people, with the prolonged uncertainty comes something, and I’ve just kind of try to create a vocabulary for the for this period.

12:29

What is often called ambiguous loss.

Ambiguous loss is a term that was created by Pauline bus way back.

When to talk about situations of unresolved morning.

So, for example, you have a parent or a family member that has Alzheimer, they are still physically present, but they are psychologically gone.

12:55

Or you have people who have disappeared, they are still psychologically present, but they are physically gone.

Miscarriages are ambiguous loss.

And biggest loss, is what we are experiencing right now, for a world that is still somewhat physically present, but doesn’t resemble itself.

13:16

And you can’t fully mourn it.

But you know that there is a sense of morning that is taking place.

You know, that there is a sense of collective grief over the world of the world that you knew over the plans that you had made over the wedding’s that got canceled.

13:32

The bird is that didn’t get celebrated.

The anniversary is that were not even looked at.

It’s all of those tiny losses.

Connected with that sense of collective grief, but grief over deadness not just over the actual physical death that we all know, but the deadness that is creeping up inside of us the isolation that you’re talking about.

13:57

It’s more than just isolation.

It’s connected to what I call the loss of errors but not errors in the sexual sense are ours.

As in the Life Force the Curiosity, the mystery, the playfulness.

Nation, the spontaneity, the exploration that side of life that is on the other side of security and stability.

14:19

That is everything that has to do with reaching out has, suddenly become so tinged with danger that we live with the loss of Errors.

If it’s dangerous to be curious because curiosity takes you outside of yourself.

The only trips you’re allowed to take at this moment are the trips inside of yourself.

14:38

And yes, everybody who has lived in Real confinement for a long time.

Knows that freedom under confinement.

Comes through your imagination.

Anybody in jail has no need anybody.

In a hospital.

Has no need any child knows it?

14:54

Because the child can turn around 360 and suddenly be the new sheriff because they have the capacity to their imagination to switch the borders of reality like that.

So we don’t go on a walk.

15:10

We imagine ourselves going on a walk with somebody where each on our own phone, but we having this walk.

And slowly, we begin to believe that which our imagination is creating for us.

So that’s we have prolonged uncertainty, ambiguous loss, Collective grief.

15:30

And then with that, I think that one of the concepts that is also been very, very useful in dealing with this whole period.

And when I think of this period I think of a covid as an environmental disaster linked to the to the storms linked, to the fires link to the Something to the economic upheaval and linked to the social unrest and linked to what it means when these devices that we have.

15:55

For decades now said are making us completely disconnected.

Have remained the one and only main way to stay connected.

So, we are really dealing with stuff.

That is very hard to process when you’re in the middle of dealing with it.

But one of the terms that for me has been really useful because it’s existed.

16:15

Then the test of time is the notion of tragic optimism, you know.

Tragic optimism is the opposite of what we tend to do here often in the u.s.

Especially that kind of believes in master, you know, which is we either go back to the old normal, we go back to the old ways.

16:32

No, we’re not going back to not to do anything at yet and we don’t know what we will.

Go back to the tragic.

The optimism is the ability to maintain hope and to find meaning, despite the pain, the loss, and the suffering.

And that for me, means that when you say that you’re isolated, when you have a meeting that you don’t just Plunge Into, You know, what are the stories that you’re going to write, or what are you going to assign to whom and what?

17:00

But that, you actually take a moment to check in with each other and ask each other.

A slew of questions that have to do with who you are and how you living now, and what you’re facing now, rather than just pretend that this is business.

17:17

As usual, and you need to continue work produce perform and perfect.

And these questions may be basic questions, you know, are you taking care of anybody?

At this moment?

That is more than the usual care.

17:33

You typically do?

How many of you are sending portions of your salaries to other people than yourself who is taking care of you?

What are some of the vulnerabilities that you have grappled with, you know, have you been able to go outside and meet people in 3D, first distant walk, whatever have you lost?

17:53

Certain people and if you and how have you lost them?

What has been the loneliness for those of you who are alone.

Do you plead?

Do you have a plan that you can grow?

Do you have a pet that you can touch?

How many of you are suffering from touch hunger at this moment?

A total famine.

18:09

We are we can live without sex but we can’t live without touch.

We become desperate, desperate, angry, and irritable.

I mean, it’s just, you know, so what are we doing with touch?

When we spend that much time alone then and to Have all those things part of your conversations will actually help strengthen the emotional health and the relational health and the sense of trust and the sense of of accountability amongst each other.

18:40

So this is some of the things that I’ve been thinking about.

As I came to the meeting today.

What’s very important for me to convey to this.

Whose room is to counter the pervasive notion of Trauma.

18:59

From an individualistic perspective, IE, you’re having a problem with this, you’re having challenges issues rather than pandemics disasters.

Major upheavals in society, create consequences of grief, of confusion of loss of distrust of fear.

19:23

You and that those are normal their part and parcel of large-scale Psychosocial disasters.

They’re not your individual Challenge and that Collective traumas need Collective healing.

20:07

Let me just ask you, give me a tiny bit of a pulse check response of what you hear.

What strikes, you what, irks you, all of it?

Yes, I was going to say something about the trying to do routines.

I found it much harder, but been pretty covid.

20:27

I was very routine oriented.

And now I find that I like really struggle to keep them for like maybe a week and then something will happen and it completely falls apart.

And I feel like I think even further than I was before trying to Institute these routines in my life.

20:44

So I don’t know if you have any Any advice for for that love you routines, like just maybe doing something in the middle of the day.

Like when I start working, I kind of go into a work hole and like 5 hours will pass and I’m still on my computer and I won’t move for a long time.

21:06

So that’s something that I’ve tried to Institute, which I just can’t seem to keep consistent.

IU, IU solo.

Do you have people in your orbit?

I’m solo and you have people outside in your orbit that they’re not too far away.

21:22

Not really.

I just moved like, six weeks ago.

So, yeah, I would, I would simply say this, it’s very, very hard to be completely alone and disciplined about some of these routines in general, and maybe you were good in the past.

21:47

But in this moment, I think that one of the most important ways to create any routines or any changes is to be accountable to others.

It’s not to do it alone.

You know, if somebody shows up at your door, or if you have a call that you need to make because you’ve made a date with someone that we taking a 20-minute break.

22:07

And we’re going outside.

You will go outside.

I, I’ve done a few of these things from the beginning and the what I can say is, they become cohesive forces.

They become not just routines.

22:22

They become ways that are part of the new structure of your life.

So whichever your routines are it has to do with exercise if it has to do with taking a break to eat, if it has to do with going Outdoors, if it has to do with taking a moment to close, all the devices for 10 minutes planning with somebody else.

22:43

Who shows up with you on your team, among your friends doesn’t have to be related to work at all.

You find two or three people who have the same, need that you and the same complaint as you And the most important thing is that you do the most, you can in motion.

23:00

We have never never be that sedentary as we have had to be these last month.

It is a sedentary and in front of a screen and in front of a spring in which I’m looking at you now and I think I’m making eye contact but I know damn well that I’m not.

There are no mirror neurons here.

23:15

Converging and so my brain is constantly aching to make an effort to make me feel like I’m taking you in and you’re taking me in and we are actually Nicotine, and so I am putting out an enormous amount of energy to create that interpersonal energy between us and if we succeeding in some way but at the end of the day, I am exhausted and you are all too.

23:41

And so when the body moves while you do that, you can do it while you’re on the phone.

Or even if you look at the screen, while you walk, your you are creating a very different physiology.

And with that physiology energy, state of mind and etc.

Etc.

So those are my micro changes on this one.

24:01

If I can jump in a little bit, I, you know, I really resonated with me what you said about the, you know, the loss of Eros, which he defined as kind of the loss of, you know, Adventure curiosity spontaneity.

Because I think that that’s, that’s actually, I think especially hard for, for us journalist because part of our work is going out into the world talking to people, you know, oftentimes traveling and I feel like I’ve really The loss of that really hard this year.

24:33

It’s just it just feels like this this sort of weird lost year almost where even though so many of my mantis things happened like all of my days kind of looks the same.

I guess like I almost feel kind of a sense of like anger, at this time, sort of just being such a strange empty time.

24:56

It does make you kind of question the value, even the value of your work, right?

It’s like, oh, what am I really doing?

Like, how am I really contributing?

As I don’t really know exactly.

My question is just sort of like how to how to kind of come to terms with that.

Well, I think that first of all, the anger is part of the grief and the grief is part of the experience, this Collective loss that I’m talking about.

25:16

It’s not just like it.

De singer is very much part of That acute stress.

That is in this grifting.

What you have as journalists.

I mean, I think journalists psychotherapists.

We are a type of essential worker.

25:34

Different from this narrow definition that has been given, but we are and you are and people need you in order to even know what’s going on in the world.

Are you living in?

But what you have as a journalist is that you even more than a therapist.

25:50

Because we have a few people that we remain curious about for a long time.

You have your curiosity dispersed on a daily basis.

In front of new people.

You try Von the encounter with the stranger some of you, every one of you has different beat.

Here.

But you know, this pandemic fundamentally changes, the relationship to the stranger the stranger, who now becomes an element of danger to, which you can be danger to as well.

26:18

And so that is an amazing loss of Errors happenstance.

Serendipity, chance encounters, which you have in a newsroom.

You are one of those places where you walk around.

You hear somebody on the phone and you say, oh I know about this, I can to connect you with That you do this.

26:36

This is an enormously enlivening essential dimension of a newsroom is that happen?

Stance chance, none planting that you stumble upon like that.

And when you leave, without that Dimension, you mourn, and sometimes it’s important to create little rituals together as a team.

26:57

When you meet, you know, that bring that back so that you create little experiences of surprise.

Of unknown of whatever could be recipe sharing.

It’s a channel for for creating new things, inventing, something stumbling upon something that you didn’t know.

27:17

Now, when you add it like that.

Now, that’s what does that have to do with, you know, big issues, but these small things remind you that life is actually lived in the details.

The story is maybe about big topics, but like, you know, you’re going in and to the unique details that make that Very compelling and it’s those small things.

27:38

So it’s the same when you create rituals with each other, but yes, at this moment.

You have more than many.

But you have lost more than you like of that dimension.

Yes, I guess I think also, just kind of being in a sort of a kind of like fight or flight mode.

28:02

All the time.

We had the initial shock of it happening and then we had sort of a sense of Doom about like our industry.

And then we had layoffs.

And then we had the election, which also brought a sense of Doom.

28:20

And so I found myself often just kind of Looking like I’m in a in that in the bunker like it and then kind of realizing occasionally, like, wait, this is, this is not a fight or flight moment right now, you know, but feeling like my sense of what is and what isn’t is kind of been screwed with a bit if that makes sense.

28:41

Yes, because when you have danger and you basically activate the more primitive brain It takes a while to realize that the lion is gone.

You going to spend time at first in a steep of hyper-vigilance or hyper alertness and it’s takes a while to realize?

29:02

No.

No, I can come out.

You know, nobody comes out of a bunker just running.

You come out of a bunker, whatever the bunker metaphor is.

It’s a beautiful, it’s not just the literal sense of it, you know, and you just make sure is it safe, is it?

29:18

Okay.

Can I go and then slowly slowly slowly?

You know, Liberation just takes you, you know, and in other situations you just walk in a daze for a while.

You stay calm quiet.

Different temperaments here and you just realize, oh my God.

29:36

And then slowly.

Slowly, your shoulders open up and don’t go down and your leg straightens again.

And you start to breathe deeper.

That’s the first thing you notice is that you are you no longer in the shallow breath of, you know, that is the Vigilant breath, you know, if you let it go down but because we are in a prolonged uncertainty you can’t completely relax because it ain’t over.

30:04

It ain’t over, and it’s not just the pandemic.

It’s your job security.

It’s your sense of what is the relationship, you know, between management and between journalists and reporters, you know, what is stable here, you know, you’ve gone through, you know, it’s not easy to have a new Chief in the middle of this.

30:23

There’s a lot of things that that talk to, you know, the challenges to a system to an organization and the resilience of the organization to be able to Deal with every one of these steps.

These are difficult in and of itself.

30:40

So imagine at that moment, but what’s very interesting is because you are, you know, you wouldn’t be there, all of you.

If you’re not high-achieving people high-achieving people tend to not really do this to themselves very often.

We did this.

Well, okay, I’m occasion.

30:56

We aced it, you know, and then on to the next challenge, but generally, you know, you are very, very good at analyzing, cracks you less equipped sometimes at looking at Light that shines through the cracks.

Yes, so I guess I was shaking my head.

31:18

Yes, because what you said, felt very true like analyzing the cracks seems more of a reflex to me then not or noticing where there aren’t X.

And the thing I’ve been struggling with the most is trying to understand.

31:34

Like how do I feel proud of myself for how I feel satisfied with myself in this environment and I guess like part of my story.

I guess what everyone here has heard about in great detail is that I’m a parent of two young kids.

31:55

I had a baby in December.

It’s been very hard.

And you know, I frankly feel like I am failing at everything.

I mean, I’m truly don’t use that as a turn of phrase or anything. it’s a very deep-seated feeling, like, you know, work is hard and parenting is hard and trying to be the partner is hard and I don’t feel like any of them are getting the attention they deserve and I feel like you know, sometimes when I say it is people think that what I want is like external validation or that like maybe I’m fishing for compliments somehow, but that’s not it.

32:41

It’s like really right now lacking a sense of achievement or something and on the daily basis like not knowing when anything that you decide is really the right decision.

As it is.

32:59

If you happen to live in a nuclear family with one partner and two children.

To put it really bluntly.

It is a fucked up arrangement.

It’s the least effective Arrangement that was ever created two adults for two little Smurfs and a full-time job for each. we are looking at you reactions, but you know and if there is a time where that Construct that Arrangement needs to be blasted.

33:33

It is now.

So if it’s not going to be your parents, you’re going to look around and you’re going to think pods this word that has come up in these last few months is real beautiful image of interdependence.

It’s others who are going through similar challenges as you because one other adult in the house or close by or another child, is going to change the dynamic of a family and generally for the better.

34:05

And if you are alone, it’s about moving in with one or two other people.

If you are not alone, but you are close to other people.

It’s about sharing food, so that you don’t have to eat the same leftovers, three days in a row, but you can eat somebody else’s leftovers that will make for you a very new dish.

34:24

It’s really thinking in ways that is not natural to the dominant culture of the United States, but it is natural to many people in the United States.

You know, in this moment, there are two me kind of tree is sensual experiences of the relationships rather is the people who are 24/7 together and just kind of, you know, gasping for air.

34:48

There’s the people who are alone and longing for connection and touch.

And then there are the people who are alone, even though they are people, right around them because they no longer connect to those people think that that kind of covers the main relational.

35:04

It feelings in the So this is a moment where you choose your people and you find around you from the another family that where their child goes to school with your child and you create a canopy around you and you begin to deal with the next three months differently.

35:24

It’s like the loss of the resources that you would have relied on doesn’t prevent you from creatively thinking about other resources, won’t be perfect.

But you cannot do what you’re doing.

And as you’re doing without having the feelings that you have the feelings, that you have are exactly the Phoenix.

35:41

One will expect you to have at this moment given that you have just simply too many demands in a certain sense of wanting to do them.

Well.

Well, doesn’t mean alone.

They say, I say looking at you, but I think that pieces of this may apply to many many of you.

36:00

Yes, I’m listening.

How, how do I find myself to care about my job at a time when like the world is collapsing?

And I’m like, you know what, what if I just get stoned and watch TV instead?

Okay, disasters and crises function as accelerators.

36:25

They function as accelerators in relationships and their functions are accelerators to people and they function as accelerators in terms of our priorities.

And maybe the things that you’re caring about at this moment.

They have carried you.

They have nurtured you, they bring you Joy.

36:42

They bring a smile to you and they help you deal with the big issues that are taking place in the world.

You know what you’re asking is.

Am I less committed and in my work as a journalist?

If this is not the one thing and be all that’s at the center of me all the time.

37:04

I just deal with that all the time.

Amaya painter, when I’m not painting.

Am I an actor if I’m not performing?

How much do I have to do it in order to be it?

And how much do I have to do it in order to think that I am really it?

37:22

That’s the identity question.

In all in all you may not have produced any less.

You just feel inside like you’re coasting a little bit or like you’re thinking about other things.

And this is not the only thing.

I think that is totally normal.

37:37

And if, and if there is a baby in the house, there are times when one is also not thinking about it with the same degree of enthusiasm or Focus.

You mentioned the changes at work and how much more they kind of hit because of our current situation and it has for everybody.

38:02

In this Newsroom.

I think friends colleagues have been let go.

Our bargaining committee has been going back and forth with the company over.

A lot of things that we care very passionately about and there’s Discord there and we had a A Reckoning with our company’s diversity issues over the summer.

38:26

There’s been a lot.

And when we were all in The Newsroom, like that human connection that we have, like, seeing leadership every day.

And having those little interactions like that helps rebuild trust and helps, you know, rebuild morale.

38:42

And in some ways like her - yeah, people are complicated.

But when in this situation it’s like you have to take agency.

There’s no bumping into to somebody and exchanging a few words it, there can be You know, and especially if you’re hurt, you don’t you’re not in a position to reach out.

39:00

Like, why would you want to, you want to lick your wounds and heal by yourself?

But I’m wondering, like how when we all go back to the office if we do.

What’s that going to be like and even worse?

Like how do we maintain these bonds?

39:15

That are so normal when we’re all in The Newsroom together?

That like the camaraderie that, you know, just how we feel about our colleagues and our work.

How do we maintain?

That are rebuild that in these times.

So can I ask you something?

39:31

For example?

Yeah, somebody was going to say something.

I just say that’s a very important question for me, too.

Because I started in the time of zooming has since I’ve been editor-in-chief.

I’ve never once been able to walk through The Newsroom.

39:49

I’ve never once been able to see somebody in a hall and just have a quick conversation.

There’s not a single time that I speak to somebody that is spontaneous.

And that’s true for every single person in this Newsroom and has been true since March.

We’ve not want at a spontaneous meeting.

40:09

Every meeting is a phone call for a zoom call.

I’m staying quiet because I want you all to take that in.

40:26

This is a collective experience.

This is a moment where your United in a shared experience in a shared reality.

Regardless.

40:44

So despite of the bargaining differences, that may have been.

And the other reason I want to stay quiet for a moment is because this is not a thing, you just have a solution too.

The most important solution to things that we experience around acute stress or loss.

41:08

Is the ability to sit with it together?

And to experience empathic resonance.

Now, may I ask you if you have ever had any meetings outside socially distant for work. 122 few 3 now kid.

41:35

So the research on on-screen and relationships is this, they’ve done it on couples who live down distance is that if you actually sit together, like we’re doing now and we’re just it’s fine, but it’s quite exhausting.

41:51

Whereas if we were both doing stuff in parallel play like it when people play in parallel, and I’m In your cooking or I’m at my desk working and you’re at your desk working.

But I see you like people used to be in a library that that actually is a lot better for fostering the connection and not feeling this kind of Frozen State.

42:14

You can hit create slightly office mentalities by have your screens open so that you can write and up and then you lift your head in and say, you know, I’m going to take a 10 minute break.

You want to take a 10 minute break to and then we come back break.

Take the walls basically.

42:31

And it is, of course, your imagination who will do it.

But it is very interesting experiment for you as the editor.

You have got to find ways to meet you.

People part of meet this for me is I think it’s because we still think that this is a temporary thing that’s going to go back to something.

42:50

You know, I don’t know that we’re going back to obviously.

I don’t know what I know is that we want hybrid.

Everywhere people are researching, what people want, vis-à-vis work.

They want more hybrid.

There is something about not commuting as Lomb for some people that people had like, but I also think that it depends what kind of place one lives.

43:11

In many of us don’t live in a place where we’d comfortable to work.

So, coming to the office is actually a much bigger space than anything we live in.

And there is light and there is food for some of us, which is not always something we have at home at in ample amounts, etc.

43:28

Etc.

So the workplace is a great equalizer.

The workplace is not just a place where you come to work.

It has massive psychological meanings, you know, a newsroom is probably one of the tightest places where people come together and therefore the more risky one, but people can create news hubs outdoors in the meantime as long as without freezer.

43:51

Fingers and people can type something away and and and have meetings like that.

Where you come to discuss, how we doing, you know, everything that has to do with the need to bump into people, right?

The the Serendipity, the mentorship, the negotiation, the licking, the wounds, all of those elements can be done in person.

44:11

I just think that we should not become too rigid about those tiny boxes.

An organization that goes through, massive, transitions faces.

44:30

The question of, what are the things that we want to hold on to?

And what are the things that we want to let go of?

Where do we see an opportunity to bring in something different and better?

And this is the opportunity that comes with big?

44:48

Visions, as it’s happening to this Newsroom.

It’s also happening to our society at large all disasters.

Bring reprioritization.

We ask ourselves.

What must be rebuilt and what must we build a new?

45:17

Esther perel is a therapist best-selling author speaker and host of the podcasts.

Where should we begin?

And how’s work to apply with a colleague or partner to do a session for the podcast, or to follow along with each episode show notes.

45:32

Go to how’s work, dot Esther perel.com.

How’s work is produced by magnificent noise for gimlet and Esther perel Productions.

Our production staff includes Eric Newsome, evil.

Watch over Hewitt, a Gitana and Kristen Mueller.

45:50

Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider, and the executive producers of how’s work.

Our Esther perel and Jesse Baker.

We would also like to thank Lydia Pole, Green Colin Campbell, Courteney Hamilton, Nick oxen horn, Sarah, Kramer, Jax all, and the entire Esther perel Global media team.